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Tuesday, 12 April 2016

HMS Polyphemus – The original of H.G. Wells’ Thunder Child

Martian Fighting Machine in 1906 Edition

H.G. Wells’ “The War of the Worlds” first appeared in 1897 and
described in terrifying detail how late-Victorian Britain was powerless to resist
the devastation wreaked by huge Martian “walking machine” tripods armed with
heat-rays (Lasers!) and “black smoke" poison gas. The most dramatic and memorable incident
involves frantic efforts of refugees to escape in ships across the English
Channel to France. The story is told from the viewpoint of the narrator’s
brother, who is on one of the steamers. Just as this vessel draws away from the
British coast three Martian tripods appear and begin to wade out after her. Let’s
hear how Wells tells it:

“About a couple of
miles out lay an ironclad, very low in the water, almost, to my brother's
perception, like a waterlogged ship. This was the ram Thunder Child. It was the only warship in sight, but far
away to the right over the smooth surface of the sea – for that day there was a
dead calm –lay a serpent of black smoke to mark the next ironclads of the
Channel Fleet, which hovered in an extended line, steam up and ready for
action, across the Thames estuary during the course of the Martian conquest,
vigilant and yet powerless to prevent it…”

The Thunder Child drives
towards the Martians…

“…. Big iron
upperworks rose out of this headlong structure, and from that twin funnels
projected and spat a smoking blast shot with fire. It was the torpedo ram, Thunder
Child, steaming headlong, coming to the
rescue of the threatened shipping.

Keeping his footing on
the heaving deck by clutching the bulwarks, my brother looked past this
charging leviathan at the Martians again, and he saw the three of them now
close together, and standing so far out to sea that their tripod supports were
almost entirely submerged. Thus sunken, and seen in remote perspective, they
appeared far less formidable than the huge iron bulk in whose wake the steamer
was pitching so helplessly. It would seem they were regarding this new
antagonist with astonishment. To their intelligence, it may be, the giant was
even such another as themselves. The Thunder Child fired no gun, but simply drove full speed towards them. It was
probably her not firing that enabled her to get so near the enemy as she did.
They did not know what to make of her. One shell, and they would have sent her
to the bottom forthwith with the Heat-Ray.

Suddenly the foremost
Martian lowered his tube and discharged a canister of the black gas at the
ironclad. It hit her larboard side and glanced off in an inky jet that rolled
away to seaward, an unfolding torrent of Black Smoke, from which the ironclad
drove clear. To the watchers from the steamer, low in the water and with the
sun in their eyes, it seemed as though she were already among the Martians.

They saw the gaunt
figures separating and rising out of the water as they retreated shoreward, and
one of them raised the camera-like generator of the Heat-Ray. He held it
pointing obliquely downward, and a bank of steam sprang from the water at its
touch. It must have driven through the iron of the ship's side like a white-hot
iron rod through paper.

Thunder Child's attack - by Henrique Alvim Corréa in 1906 edition

A flicker of flame
went up through the rising steam, and then the Martian reeled and staggered. In
another moment he was cut down, and a great body of water and steam shot high
in the air. The guns of the Thunder Child sounded through the reek, going off one after the other, and one shot
splashed the water high close by the steamer … but no one heeded that very
much. At the sight of the Martian's collapse the captain on the bridge yelled
inarticulately, and all the crowding passengers on the steamer's stern shouted
together. And then they yelled again. For, surging out beyond the white tumult,
drove something long and black, the flames streaming from its middle parts, its
ventilators and funnels spouting fire.

She was alive still;
the steering gear, it seems, was intact and her engines working. She headed
straight for a second Martian, and was within a hundred yards of him when the
Heat-Ray came to bear. Then with a violent thud, a blinding flash, her decks,
her funnels, leaped upward. The Martian staggered with the violence of her
explosion, and in another moment the flaming wreckage, still driving forward
with the impetus of its pace, had struck him and crumpled him up like a thing
of cardboard. My brother shouted involuntarily. A boiling tumult of steam hid
everything again…

… The steam hung upon
the water for many minutes, hiding the third Martian and the coast altogether...
and when at last the confusion cleared, the drifting bank of black vapour
intervened, and nothing of the Thunder Child could be made out, nor could the third Martian be seen.”

HMS Polyphemus - illustrations at time of her launch

Contemporary readers would have recognised the Thunder Child as being based on HMS Polyphemus, the only torpedo-ram ever
built for the Royal Navy, a bizarre but impressive experiment that was never
repeated. Commissioned in 1881, she was designed as a fast, low-profile vessel of
shallow-draft, with torpedoes as its main offensive weapons, with her ram as a
back-up. A “stealth ship” of her time, she was designed for attack by night and
for penetrating enemy anchorages.

Polyphemus in drydock

The automotive “fish” torpedo was a new weapon in the 1870s and
its ability to inflict damage to a ship’s hull below the waterline was clearly
its main advantage. Opinions differed on how best it could be employed and
through the 1870s various solutions were considered. One of these was the torpedo-ram
concept and it was to find its embodiment in the Polyphemus, a partly armoured cigar-shaped vessel that would run
almost awash and carry five submerged 14-inch torpedo tubes, one of them –
quite surprisingly – running down the centre of the ram. As completed in 1881 she was 240 feet long and
of 2640 tons. Her twin-shaft steam engines gave her at maximum speed of 17.8
knots.

She was innovative in several ways. Her armoured turtle-deck
ran almost awash and her low superstructure – which included six cylindrical
shields in each of which a 1-inch semi-automatic Nordenvelt gun was mounted –
sat on top and was designed to float free in the event of sinking. The
hull-shape had been optimised for minimum resistance – as can be seen from
diagrams – and a retractable rudder was built into the bows to facilitate
movement astern, and to decrease her turning
circle when going ahead. Polyphemus was
also equipped with a separate 250-ton cast iron keel which could be dropped in
an emergency The drill and the mechanism for doing so was tested every two
weeks. She was the first Royal Navy ship to be fitted with an 80-volt direct
current electrical system – this lower-voltage system reflecting experience of the
dangers of the 800-volt system used on the navy’s first “electric ship” HMS Inflexible.

HMS Polyphemus, seen here at Malta

The Polyphemus
spent much of her career, until she was relegated to secondary duties in 1900,
in the Mediterranean. Given the low hull profile, and the need to minimise deck
openings, working conditions in the boiler and machinery spaces must have been uncomfortable
in the extreme. It was soon recognised that the design concept was a dead-end,
as the arrival of quick-firing weapons was likely to make her very vulnerable
since, due to her size, she would never have the nimbleness and “survivability”
of a much smaller torpedo-boat. Launching of her 14-inch torpedoes, which had a
range of 600 yards only, demanded almost suicidal closing with an enemy ship.

Polyphemus (r of centre) ramming the boom at Berehaven 30th June 1885

Polyphemus was to
have one brief moment of glory, not in combat with Martians, but when a war scare
in 1885 raised the possibility of action against the Russian Navy. Penetration
of the Russian base at Kronstadt was considered, with Polyphemus using her ram to smash through protective floating booms
and open the way for other ships to follow. A trial was accordingly arranged at
Berehaven, the Royal Navy anchorage in South-West Ireland. A boom, similar to
one the Russians might employ was constructed, the floating obstacles linked by
5-inch steel cables and with nets attached to entangle propellers. Six small
torpedo boats were assigned to patrolling the approaches. On 30th
June the Polyphemus mounted her
attack, building up speed on a two-mile run towards the boom and evading some
ten practice-torpedoes launched by the opposing patrol boats. She smashed her
way through the boom – unfortunately the only existing photograph, as shown above, was taken from
a distance and the full drama is not conveyed by it – and she proved that in this
one very special scenario she could prove her worth.

And that was the end of her spell in the limelight. War with
Russia was averted and she returned to routine – and probably very
uncomfortable – service. When the Royal Navy finally attacked Kronstadt, in
1919, against Bolshevik forces, it was with light motor-torpedo boats with a
turn of speed – some 40 knots – inconceivable when Polyphemus was designed. The only other scenario in which she might
have proved of value was that described by H.G. Wells.

I have always loved the Thunderchild sequence in WotW. As an antipodean, it always reminded my of the Victorian colonial casemate battleship HMVS Cerberus (the wreck of which lay close to where I grew up)

Paul: It's unforgettable. It's amazing how advanced the Cerberus was - a decade or so ahead of the (twice as large) RN Devastation. It can be argued that it was the Cerberus, and not the Devastation, that set the layout paradigm for later pre-dreadnought development.

About Me

My "Dawlish Chronicles" are set in the late 19th Century and reflect my deep interest in the politics, attitudes and technology of the period. The fifth novel in the series, “Britannia’s Amazon” is now available in both paperback and Kindle formats. It follows the four earlier Dawlish Chronicles, "Britannia's Wolf", "Britannia's Reach”, "Britannia's Shark" and "Britannia's Spartan". Click on the book covers below to learn more or to purchase.
I’ve had an adventurous career in the international energy industry and am proud of having worked in every continent except Antarctica. History is a driving passion in my life and I have travelled widely to visit sites of historical significance, many insights gained in this way being reflected in my writing. I welcome contact on Facebook and via this Blog. My website is www.dawlishchronicles.com and its “Conflict” section has a large number of articles on topics from the mid-18th Century to the early 20th Century.